Pathway to Net Zero
Following the announcement that Siemens UK has been selected as an approved supplier to the Net Zero Carbon Delivery Framework developed by Essentia Trading Limited, our UK Smart Hospitals experts will be exploring Siemens' Net Zero Carbon solutions in a live webinar on Wednesday 24th March.
By taking a long-term partner approach to Net Zero Carbon, Siemens' business and environmental solutions will be able to help hospitals to transform sustainably.
New challenges in the transition to the new normal
Especially in demanding times like these, the demand for healthcare services is growing. Patients have ever-increasing expectations about the safety and quality of healthcare treatments and services. In addition, regulations are becoming more and more complex.Smart for the new normal: That is our answer for mastering the healthcare challenges of today and tomorrow. Hospitals must excel in the new normal, and digitalization is key. It revolutionizes hospitals on the human, financial and operational level. Smart hospitals offer lower infection risks, enhanced security and improved air quality while at the same time improving patient satisfaction and optimizing staff and energy efficiency. Smart infrastructure from Siemens helps hospitals master this digital transformation by collecting, analyzing and making use of data. We provide the hardware and software needed to get the most out of a hospital’s infrastructure in order to create a safe environment that supports the entire healing process.
White paper: A smart hospital concept by Siemens
Discover how smart hospitals offer a vision for optimizing multiple aspects of operational performance.
Smart answers to hospital pressures
Hospitals must master a multitude of challenges at the same time: They have to reduce labor and operating costs, enable their staff to work more efficiently, optimize space efficiency, comply with changing regulations – and all that without compromising on a positive patient experience. Smart hospitals help master these challenges with solutions that support optimum healing and working conditions.
A clear focus on healthcare needs
Every smart hospital solution is tailored to the building structure it is designed for. At the center lies a clear focus on efficiency, patient satisfaction, quality, and compliance. Smart hospitals create added value by systematically addressing the key drivers of every healthcare facility. Smart hospital solutions focus on optimizing cost and energy efficiencies, improving patient outcomes, increasing staff productivity, complying with changing regulations, and implementing campus extensions. This holistic approach turns smart hospital solutions into the answer for mastering the healthcare challenges of today and tomorrow.
Helping staff work more efficiently
The staff workload in hospitals is enormous. Nurses spend an average of 72 minutes per shift searching for assets, coworkers and wandering patients. Real Time Location Services (RTLS) increase staff productivity by helping them track assets and coworkers, control patient throughput, and find wandering patients. Making the work environment more comfortable is becoming an important factor as well. With more millennials entering the workforce, expectations and demands increase. Desigo Total Room Automation (TRA) puts staff in control of their workspace with personalization options like access control, lighting adjustment, temperature setpoints and airflow via RFID key.
Reducing maintenance and energy costs
Smart infrastructure technologies can help reduce maintenance and energy costs and increase power resiliency at the same time. Building Information Modeling (BIM) can greatly increase OPEX efficiency with condition-based or predictive maintenance. Combined with appropriate protection devices for electrical equipment, maintenance times can be reduced significantly. Energy consumption is the second major field of action. Hospitals consume about 2.5 times more energy than an average office building, while 40 percent of healthcare emissions come from electricity, gas, heating or cooling. Therefore, increasing energy efficiency is key to reducing costs and emissions. An Energy Efficiency Analysis (EEA) is the foundation for identifying potential areas for savings. The Desigo CC integrated building management platform and Navigator provide transparency on consumption and help hospitals realize energy savings.
Creating the best possible patient experience
Patient well-being is at the center of any hospital operation. This begins even before the patient enters the building itself, e.g. by making appointments online to reduce wait times. Once in hospital, optimized patient flow helps keep wait times at a minimum. At the same, the building has to become an environment that is beneficial for the healing process. Patients want to feel safe and in control when they are in the hospital – and know that they receive optimum care right from the beginning. The hospital room plays a significant role in creating a healing environment that speeds up recovery. Individual room control of building systems such as room temperature, lighting and shading is among the top 5 factors for improving patient satisfaction. Desigo Room Automation (DRA) allows patients to easily control all systems from one single unit. This gives them as much control as possible over their environment, thus creating a comfortable atmosphere that helps speed up recovery. Human centric lighting also plays an important role in creating optimum healing conditions. Lighting that helps keep the patient’s circadian rhythms in sync promotes better sleep and ultimately contributes to a faster recovery. To make sure that patients do not catch new infections while in the hospital, pressurized rooms and isolation rooms are essential. Desigo pressurized room and fume hood control ensures that bacteria and viruses remain contained and do not spread within the hospital itself. This helps create a safe healing environment.
Optimizing space efficiencies
Hospitals must be able to respond to changing requirements – in terms of long-term shifts in needs as well as in response to urgent and immediate situations. To do so, it is vital to know exactly how the current space is being used. IoT-based multi-sensors visualize space utilization history, provide important insights on room usage, unused square footage and peak times in waiting rooms, as well as show conflicting flows of people. If a change in the building layout is necessary, Desigo Room Automation provides maximum flexibility to adapt the spaces to changing needs. If the hospital building needs to be expanded, implementing Building Information Modeling (BIM) right from the beginning is the best option to gain maximum transparency of the entire building from the very start and over the entire lifecycle. The digital twin of the building allows hospital managers to make informed decisions based on reliable data, thus ensuring optimum use of space, resources, and energy.
Comply with regulations
Healthcare facilities must meet a number of regulations set out by governments and authorities. Even though regulations are different in almost every country, smart hospitals help meet local requirements. They provide transparency over delivered services and costs as well as optimal building performance through connectivity and data analytics and insightful dashboards. Data on room conditions can be archived to comply with regulations, while a user portal gives clear insights on performance and maintenance activities. This helps operators make their hospital more cost-efficient, more sustainable and more competitive.
